Of the exploit of "non-meat" meat, or meat of non-animal origin, if you prefer, First&Food he talked about it in its time. The phenomenon then took on further amplitude, to the point of becoming the new food paradigm of 2019. Just to give an example, the American company Beyond Meat, listed on the Stock Exchange and valued at 7,1 billion dollars, last year had a turnover of 265 million, well three times the previous year. A great performance, for a sector that has yet to fully take off and which encounters many perplexities on the part of consumers. It is thanks to the “alternative” meat boom that in 2019 foodtech startups, according to what was calculated by AgFunder, a venture capital platform specializing in the agro-industry, collected the monstrous figure of 20 billion dollars.
The figure is actually down slightly, due to the slowdown in investments in the food delivery apps sector, a market now dominated by the usual suspects Deliveroo, JustEat and Uber Eats. This is why this precise area has halved funding compared to 2018, raising "only" 2,4 billion. However, there were some interesting ideas, such as the billion raised by DoorDash or the 400 million collected by Cloud Kitchens, the startup created by the founder of Uber, Travis Kalanick. Moreover, Cloud Kitchen could be the pioneer of a new trend in the world of food and that is of virtual kitchens (dark kitchen), shared rooms where you can cook specifically for home deliveries, thus reducing management costs compared to a real traditional restaurant. Kalanick's new creature is in fact already valued at 5 billion.
But the star of the moment, even from a financial point of view, is the meatless hamburger. Apart from Beyond Meat (which claims that its meat causes 90% less emissions than normal meat), the success story of Impossible Foods, the company that produces meat without animal proteins and which has recently partnered with the fast food chain Burger King. Impossible Foods raised 800 million dollars last year, many of which through the participation of celebrities such as Jay-Z, Katy Perry or Serena Williams. In 2019 the so-called Novel Farming has also exploded, with 745 million dollars of financing received (+38%). The French startup Ynsect (whose plant is almost entirely automated) has raised 125 million to deal with insect farms to feed animals.
Another great novelty of 2019, the "vertical" farms. Already widespread in Japan and the USA, these are basically urban gardens. In Japan, for example, through special ventilation and lighting systems, the trend of cultivating it directly at home has taken hold, which allows, compared to, for example, cultivation in a greenhouse, to multiply the production of basil by 54 times. In this context, the exploit of the German Infarm should be noted, which collected 134 million dollars and signed a partnership with the English distribution chain Marks and Spencer, to supply some of the points of sale. Finally, a mention must be made for the startup Nuro, which makes food delivery robotsFounded by Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, former chief designers of self-driving cars at Google, it has raised nearly $1 billion in funding.
